Word: felici
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Dates: during 1952-1952
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Signs in Rome last week suggested that the Vatican's unofficial truce with psychoanalysis might be over. Writing for the Bulletin of the Roman Clergy, Monsignor Pericle Felici, an official of the Sacred Congregation of the Sacraments, loudly attacked "the absurdity of psychoanalysis." He stated flatly that anyone who adopts the Freudian method is risking mortal...
Official Vatican spokesmen quickly slid out from under Monsignor Felici's words. He wrote, they protested, as an individual; signed articles in the Bulletin, a monthly magazine for clergy of the Rome diocese, do not represent official church opinion, much less dogma. Monsignor Felici corroborated them: "It was an effort at making a personal judgment on Freudian psychology...
...spokesman added the official Roman Catholic caution on psychoanalysis: only "its excesses and deformations" must be avoided. These specifically include the Freudian's habit of labeling all human virtues "sublimated sexual emotions" (Monsignor Felici, in his article, had noted the same evil). Concluded the Vatican: "Should psychoanalytic treatment be judged harmful to the spiritual health of the faithful, the church would not hesitate to take adequate steps to brand it as such. Nothing, so far, indicates that such steps are about to be taken...